Hello, fellow Internet surfer and
a warm welcome to my web site. As my home page says, "Jamaica Jim
is the name and Caribbean traveling is the game!" I'm glad that you
made it this far -- and I hope that you'll stick around long enough to
get to know just a little bit more about me, my background, my interests
and my life. After all, in these days and times, acquaintances that
begin in cyberspace are often some of the most real, vivid, and long lasting
of all - and maybe that will be true of Thee and Mee!

My Background

I was born right here in South Carolina
- where the first shots of the Civil War (otherwise known to most Southerners
as "The War of Yankee Aggression" or "The Late, Great Unpleasantness")
were fired. In fact, I was raised just two blocks behind my great
grandmother Lewis's house - and a feistier ol' Scot you never met!
As a lad, I even tried my hand at pickin' cotton - for bout 2 hours - my
hands were blistered and I was plumb tuckered out, but I was only five
years old! (I learned that cotton pickin' just wasn't my bag - no
pun intended!)

I attended school in Greenville,
South Carolina. First I went to Augusta Circle School, then
to Greenville Junior High School (no "middle" school back in those
years!) and finally Greenville Senior High School. But, I
was even then looking for "something else." And I found that something
else at Sewanee Military Academy in Sewanee, Tennessee. I
probably wasn't the sharpest cadet - militarily - but my very first day
at SMA an upper class man told me to go get "the key to the flagpole!"
Not to be outdone, I hunted up the janitor (what we now call a maintenance
engineer, but back in them days, in them parts, they called 'em "janitors"!)
and got him to give me a stray key from his ring. This was promptly
delivered to the upper clansman - and I had no more problems from upperclassmen
for as long as I was at the academy.

Being pig-headed, I got it in what
tiny bit of mind I then possessed, that I wanted to join the Army!
Nothing would do but that I dropped out of school mid-year of my senior
year and enlisted in the Ewe Ess Army! BIG MISTAKE! But, it
was a mistake that probably contributed a helluva lot toward the man I
eventually became! I took my basic training at Camp (now Fort)
Gordon,
Georgia, and then went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for advanced
armor training (that means I learned how to drive an M-47 tank - and to
pull maintenance on it, which amounted to working ON the tank for eight
hours for every hour is was out on the road and in the field!). Fort
Knox - where you can walk in mud up to your ass - and breathe in dust
at the same time!

I eventually ended up as a Staff
Sergeant in a reconnaissance platoon of a tank battalion - which
meant I rode in jeeps and didn't have anything else to do with those damn
tanks! My unit, the 709th Medium Tank Battalion - part of
the 3rd Armored Division - shipped over to Germany in 1956,
where I spent two of the most interesting years of my life.

(When I left Germany two years
later, I didn't return for thirty-six years! When I did return,
the place had really changed! Where I'd always remembered a
couple of gasthauses being on the corners of the square in the nearby village,
there was now a Burger King on one corner - and a Pizza Hut on the other!)

When I was discharged, I returned
to my native South Carolina and entered Clemson College (now, Clemson
University) as a veteran-freshman - which meant I wasn't hazed by upper
class men. That was fine with me, since I had served my time and gotten
my fill of hazing in military school and the Army!

I renewed my courtship of my pre-army
girlfriend - Nina - and lo and behold, she ended up becoming my
"first wife" - and she STILL is! We subsequently had two
beautiful daughters (I know - everybody says that THEIR children are
beautiful, but ours really and truly were -- and are!) - Alston
and Sarah.

Our two daughters each have two daughters,
so you can readily realize that I've always lived in a matriarchy!
(And, I have loved every minute of it, too!) The girls and their
families live nearby - sometimes too near by!

I had a number of various and varied
jobs, all of which I feel enabled me to become the consummate generalist
- a "Jack of All Trades." (Unfortunately, bout the time I reached
that position, it was the "Age of Specialization" - and everybody wanted
to hire specialists! So much for being a generalist!)

I worked for sixteen years for a "major
general contractor" and worked my way slowly up the proverbial corporate
ladder. I was eventually pretty high up, only to be caught by a corporate
layoff - at age forty-nine and a half! (So much for corporate ladder
climbing!) I searched for a job - ANY job - and finally found one
with a regional bank as Assistant Vice President - Regional Real Estate
Manager, with responsibility for overseeing construction of new buildings
and maintaining the bank's occupied facilities in South Carolina.

After seven years, I figured work just
wasn't for me and I wanted to quit the rat race! (Hell, the damn
rats were winning!) I was working at a job I hated and I despised
what it was doing to me. I guess really I just realized that work
wasn't fun anymore - so I quit! (I'm really serious - now
to me,"work" is a four letter word!) I luckily I had
a small outside income which enabled me get out when I did. That
was back in 1993 - and I haven't regretted leaving the work force for one
shinny minute.

Now, I don't work at all!
However, I do travel as often as I can - and spend the rest of the time
seated in front of one of my seven (that's right - seven) computers!
I utilize the computers for most everything in my daily life, from maintaining
all my myriad bank accounts, writing loads of letters, printing envelopes
(for those damn bills that come without a return envelope!), sending e-mails
all over the world, maintaining my address books, sysoping and posting
messages and replies on The Travel Forum on CompuServe (and
I also managed to manage The Caribbean Travel Forum on CompuServe
for five and a half years until CompuServe closed it down!) ... well, you
kind of get the picture! (I also manage to work in a few games
of computer Solitaire sometimes while I'm downloading files, etc.!
Nina uses her computer - exclusively - to play Solitaire!)

(For a picture
of me at the computers, click here
or on the picture at left.)

I did live in a nice, neat, two story
white house with six white columns (sorta "Southern colonial mansion" style)
located in Easley, South Carolina, with Nina - my original "first
wife"- of forty-four years! However, in October, 2000, after
nearly twenty-five years in the same house, we finally bought what is our
"retirement home" - in, of all places, Greenville, South Carolina,
where I was raised!! And, it's just four blocks from the house that
I lived in as a boy!

Our new house is situated at 110
Wren Wayin Swansgate,
a delightful , quiet, gated "seniors" community - and the land that it
now occupies was part of our neighborhood, where I played as a young boy!
Talk about going back to one's roots!! (If
you'd like to see exactly where my house is located, click here
or on the picture at left to access a separate map page!)

I'm a sysop for the Caribbean Section
on The
Travel Forum on CompuServe, where I get all kinds of questions
from people all over the world asking about the Caribbean, Jamaica and
Hedonism II in Negril. (You can also jump over to The Travel
Forum's link on the Links Page of this web site.) I also have
some "content" pages on the web site of the travel agency I use for all
my traveling -- Go
Classy Tours - where they maintained a "column" of e-mails I've received
and my responses - sorta like a Caribbean "Dear Abby"-- which is called
"Ask Jamaica Jim." There is an e-mail link there to
an e-mail server where I get countless e-mails all the time asking questions
bout The Caribbean.

Jamaica
Departure Tax Receipt

My Love Of
The Caribbean

Well,first
and foremost, I love anywhere that has sun and sand and sea! I've
made more than a hundred trips to the Caribbean, been to Jamaica more than
forty times and to Hedonism II thirty times, as of this coming May, 2003!
I haven't yet been to all the various islands in and around the Caribbean
("So many islands ... and so little time to see 'em all!") and I don't
pretend to be an expert ... on anything! But, I do have
some good insights into the various island nations that are there and I
have a pretty extensive reference library of more than a hundred travel
books ... every one of them about the Caribbean! (Nina, my "first
wife" ... of forty-two years ... says I read travel books the way other
folks read novels!)

Ask me about my favorite beaches, anything
related to your upcoming trip! I'll be happy to have for you
to post me any questions you might have on the Caribbean. And,
I do "try" to reply to each and every e-mail I get.

So, there you have it!
That's about all there is to know about Yours Truly! I hope
I didn't cause your computer to crash, what with all the tripe I type!
Suffice it to say that I have lived a full and happy life - and I plan
on keeping on doing that for a helluva long time to come!! Much love
-- and maximum respect!

Jamaica Jim Jordan
("The
PRIME Minister of Hedonism" -- and a LIVING legend in his own MIND!)